The Heiress Effect (36 page)

Oliver turned to the man. “Yes,” he said in
his normal voice, “I do. Because I hadn’t planned on riding double
back to town.”

There was a long pause. “What?’ Dorling
asked.

“Riding double,” Oliver said. “You would not
believe how fortuitous your appearance was. I was looking for
transportation, and there, just outside the hall, was a man who had
transportation—transportation that I knew he wouldn’t be needing.
Imagine my delight.” He shook his head. “It was a good thing I
managed to make another arrangement with the driver.”

“I don’t understand,” Dorling said. “Who are
you?”

“I had planned to jettison you a little
farther from civilization, but this will have to do. Stay with the
cart, and the driver will come pick you up mid-afternoon tomorrow.
You’ll be back in Nottingham by night, which I presume will give us
enough time.” Oliver walked to the back and began to rummage in the
boot. “There are blankets and wine and some spare food back here,
so you won’t be too uncomfortable.”

“You can’t make me! I have a—” He started to
brandish his empty hand and then stared at it.

“Yes.” Oliver’s voice came from behind the
carriage. “A little advice: Next time you try an abduction, don’t
give your weapon to someone you don’t know.”

Jane smirked.

“This is outrageous!” Dorling said. “Who are
you, and what have you done with my cart driver?”

Oliver came back from the boot carrying a
saddle. “Jane, I’m sorry to say that we’re going to have to ride
double. Are you game?”

Jane found herself smiling. “How did you
know? How did you do this?”

“Simple,” he said. “I told you you weren’t
alone. Did you really think I would leave you?”

She didn’t know what to say. She just shook
her head and watched him saddle the horse. It was the first time
she’d ever seen him do anything physical, and he did it so swiftly
and so smoothly that she was reminded that he’d grown up on a farm.
He could argue politics and rescue impossible girls and saddle a
horse with equal ease.

She’d spent months thinking about him.
Thinking about what she might have said to him if only she’d been
brave enough.

She wouldn’t let it go unsaid much
longer.

“We don’t have much time,” he said, “but it
will be enough.” He mounted the horse, and then held out his hand
to Jane. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go.”

“Wait,” she said. “The weapon, if you
please.”

He held it out to her without asking. Jane
turned, and Dorling’s face went white. “Please,” he said. “Don’t…
You don’t need to…”

Jane rolled her eyes. “Oh, stop blubbering. I
want my five hundred pounds back.”

“But it means nothing to you! To me, it would
be…”

“Yes,” Jane said. “I know what it would mean
to you.” She pointed the pistol directly at his forehead. “That’s
why I want it back.”

Two people, both in evening dress, could not
ride comfortably on one horse. Oliver cinched his arm around Jane
for the fifteenth time in four minutes and shifted in the saddle
behind her.

Jane’s skirts flapped voluminously in the
breeze. Something sharp and protuberant in her skirts jabbed his
thigh. And the beads sewn into her gown were itchy and
uncomfortable.

Still, it wasn’t wholly awful. After all,
Jane was warm and soft, and it was all too easy to breath in the
scent of her. She smelled of familiar soap.

Twenty-four hours ago, he’d been reading in a
comfortable chair at Clermont house, thinking about how to exert
influence on the Members of Parliament that he knew.

Now he was on a horse, God knew how far from
civilization, with an heiress of dubious reputation, plotting to
kidnap a nineteen-year-old girl from her guardian. It was as if he
had exited reality and found himself plopped into the middle of
some kind of medieval tale of chivalry, one where he needed his
wits and his sword to survive.

He’d planned out the course of his life years
ago—quiet service, eventual recognition, a slow rise to power.
There was no room in that story for the ridiculously impulsive
actions he’d taken today: leaving London on a bare half hour’s
notice, finding Jane, foiling abduction plots against impossible
odds.

There would be plenty of time to come to his
senses. He tightened his arms briefly around Jane, thinking of that
dazzling moment when he’d first seen her on the stairs.

He had all the right emotions. He’d expected
to fall in love one day. Just not like this. Not with her. He was
in the wrong story with the wrong lady. Someone had made a
mistake…and he very much feared it was him.

But Jane leaned back against him, and even
though he could have written a list about all the ways that she was
a mistake, she didn’t feel like one.

“It’s not fair,” Jane said, echoing his
feelings so closely that he sucked in a breath. “This is supposed
to be romantic. What woman does not want to have a man rush to her
aid and sweep her away on his fiery stallion?”

Yes, they had definitely found themselves in
the wrong story. “I would refer to this particular steed more as a
‘placid gelding’ than a ‘fiery stallion,’” Oliver said. “That’s the
first problem.”

“In the books,” Jane said, “the man always
clasps the woman lovingly to him, and she melts in his
embrace.”

“My embrace isn’t loving enough for you?”

His arm was around her. But no matter his
intentions and his emotions—and God, what a morass those were—he
couldn’t call his clasp
loving.
It was more like a desperate
attempt to keep her from sliding off the seat.

“I can’t speak for your embrace,” she
replied. “But I don’t think my body is
melting
into yours. I
feel more like a ship being tossed against the rocks.”

Oliver smiled again. “Friction is the very
devil,” he replied. “Also, women who want loving embraces ought not
to wear an arsenal of beads. Then there’s that thing that’s poking
into my thigh.”

“Hmm?”

“Hard to think of romance with something that
uncomfortable so close to my delicate parts,” Oliver said. “In
fact, I have to exert some substantial effort just to make sure
that my voice doesn’t go up an octave. That sharp pokey thing in
your skirts is threatening to unman me.”

“What do you mean?” She reached behind her
and groped his thigh—an action he wished he was in a better
position to appreciate. “Oh. That’s just five hundred pounds in a
roll. Stop whining, Oliver; it’s better than having it stuffed down
a corset.” She sighed. “The stories never mention that saddles
built for one rather than two make your backside go numb. Also”
—she turned in the saddle, just enough that he had to hold her more
tightly to keep from slipping—“did you know that your thighs are
extremely hard? And I thought the squabs of the carriage were
uncomfortable.”

“You’d like it even less if I had pillowy
thighs,” Oliver replied.

She leaned back against him. “Mmm. Pillowy
thighs. Those would be lovely right now. Thighs that I could shut
my eyes and sink into. Your thighs are like oak logs. Very
unrestful.”

“Yes, but here’s the problem. If I had
pillowy thighs, I would have reached down to swing you atop my
fiery gelding, and when I tried to heft you in the air, I would
have dropped you. ‘Damn it!’ I’d proclaim. ‘I just threw out my
back!’”

She laughed softly.

“All the stories are wrong,” he told her.

He meant it just how he said it—they were
filled with falsehoods and euphemisms. But he also meant it how he
didn’t say it: that they were wrong to be here.

“Impossible girl.” But his lips were so close
to her neck that even that whispered label felt like an endearment,
rather than a reminder.

There was a long pause. And then…

“Thank you. I didn’t say that before, did I?
I was too flabbergasted that you arrived, and then everything
seemed to get away from me. Including myself. I’m afraid I’ve been
horribly rude, and for once I didn’t intend it.”

She’d turned to him again—or at least, had
turned her head toward him as best as she could manage on a moving
horse. Despite the discomfort of it all, he was enjoying holding
her. She felt lovely in his arms, a bundle of complex scents.
Lavender and rose and a clean, citrus smell that reminded him of
home.

She sighed. “And here I am, talking again. I
don’t know what it is about you. How is it that every time you’re
near, I can’t seem to keep quiet?”

His arms were already around her. He could
have set his chin on her shoulder if he’d leaned down a few inches.
All the stories were wrong, but one thing seemed absolutely
right.

“It’s because you’re thinking about this,” he
said, and kissed her.

There was no good way to kiss a woman who was
sharing his saddle. His neck crooked awkwardly, and he had to hold
tight to keep her from slipping off. But it didn’t matter. All
those months disappeared—those long, dark months without her there,
when he could have been doing
this
. Holding her. Kissing
her. Exploring her mouth, inch by luscious inch.

The horse, sensing Oliver’s inattention,
slowed to an amble. Even that damned sharp thing in her skirts
stopped being so noticeable. There was nothing but her and the
night around them. Crickets chirped somewhere; a bird that hadn’t
yet noticed that night had fallen called out. His hands were full
of her. If he let go, she might slip bonelessly off the horse.

If he stopped kissing her, he might have to
think about the future. He didn’t want to contemplate a world away
from this road, away from her kiss. So he didn’t stop. He simply
held her close and tasted her.

“Oh,” she said, when he finally raised his
head, subtly stretching out the kink in his neck.

But she didn’t ask any questions. Instead,
she leaned back against him. Her hair was beginning to fall out of
its heavy coiffure. If this were a story, little curls would be
coming undone, little tendrils of hair escaping down her back.
Instead, the mass of her hair leaned to one side, canting like a
half-uprooted tree. Occasionally, she’d reach up and do her best to
adjust it back to straight, but inevitably, it would start falling
once more. When he wasn’t careful, her hairpins jabbed him.

“I suppose,” she finally said, “that makes up
for your horrible, hard thighs.”

He smiled. “I would say that you’ve made up
for your money, but that would be a lie. You’ve a long way to
go.”

She met his eyes over her shoulder. “How long
a way?”

“Miles,” he told her. “Miles and miles of
kisses, taken at an amble like this. Maybe once we’ve made it to
the Stag and Hounds, I’ll be ready to stop.”

Maybe they’d never make it there. Maybe the
rest of the world could be held at bay, and they might spend
forever uninterrupted in this darkness with nothing to do but kiss.
Maybe that was all this story would be—a nightlong kiss, one where
dawn never came.

“Then we must get started immediately.” She
tilted her head to his once more.

This time, the horse came to a complete stop.
He held her in place with one firm hand at her waist, and let the
other skitter down her shoulder, stroking her lightly, playing with
the lace at her neckline, the fabric under it. Her skin underneath
was warm and soft. When he skimmed the tops of her breasts, she let
out a little gasp.

God, he hadn’t wanted to know that she was
that responsive. He hadn’t wanted to know it, but now that he did,
he couldn’t stop himself from exploring. He wanted to hear her
breathing arrest as he explored the soft curve of her breast.
Holding her this close, he could feel that almost-inaudible moan
she made. It was a vibration deep in her rib cage, one he sensed in
the palms of his hands. He slid his fingers farther under her
neckline, under her corset, until he found the place where her skin
changed from the softness of her breast to the hard nub of her
nipple.

She gave out a soft cry.

“There’s only so much I can do on a horse,”
he murmured in her ear. “And perhaps it’s just as well, because if
I had you in a bed tonight, I don’t think I could keep my mouth
from taking the place of my hands.”

He slid his finger in another circle around
her breast.

She swept her hand down his shoulder. Not
skimming the fabric. Not even dipping tentatively below the lapels
of his coat. Her palm conformed to his chest, seeking out the shape
of his muscles, as if the fabric were not even there.

It didn’t matter where they were. What they
were doing. That she wore a ball gown, that there were layers of
silk and wool separating their skin. He burned for her, burned to
kiss every last inch of her. He burned to touch the places he
couldn’t reach at this moment.

“God, Jane. God. Tell me not to pull you off
this horse.”